2011 Stew Music Awards

It was a fine year, indeed! Perhaps 2010 was a tough act to follow... however I am pleased with the both the long time favorites and new discoveries. Many of these albums / singles I pointed out on Facebook so no big surprises. The album list for this year goes back to just 10 and I will also post videos of the top 20 singles for 2011. Now with Spotify links!

10) The One AM Radio - Heaven Is Attached By A Slender Thread

9) Bombay Bicycle Club - A Different kind of Fix

8) The Sea and Cake - Moonlight Butterfly

7) Strfkr - Reptillian

6) Cut Copy - Zonoscopy

5) Phantogram - Nightlife EP

4) Ivy - All Hours

3) Low - C'mon

2) Bon Iver - Bon Iver

1) Fiest - Metals


And the picks for great singles in 2011 (not in order):

Lucy Rose - Scar



M83 - Midnight City



Bjork - Crystalline



Bombay Bicycle Club - Lights Out, Words Gone



Bon Iver - Holocene



Euan Cross - Babylon Holiday (Mashup)

Congorock & Dizzee Rascal - Babylon Holiday (Euan Cross Bootleg) *DOWNLOAD IN DESCRIPTION* by Euan Cross

Lips - Everything to Me



Loquat feat. Del The Funky Homosapien - Song of the Siren



Low - Try to Sleep



Rob Crow - Scalped



Beastie Boys - Don't Play No Game I Can't Win



Beach Fossils - Adversity



Cut Copy - Hanging On To Every Heartbeat

Cut Copy - Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat from Sam Sanders on Vimeo.

Deadmau5 - Raise Your Weapon (Madeon Remix)



Robotanists - On/Off the Ledge



Phantogram - Don't Move



The Sea and Cake - Monday



The One AM Radio - In a City Without Seasons



Friendly Fires - True Love

Friendly Fires - True Love (Pala) from António Gonçalves on Vimeo.

Ivy - I Still Want You

2010 - A Great Vintage for New Music!

Wow. I thought 2009 was pretty strong... 2010 was a blockbuster. I don't know if it is just easier to find new bands that have the sound I like or if the musical genres I love are more popular. Certainly all the retro 80's new wave influence is helping. Anyway, here is the top 20 list for 2010 - yup, I wimped out and couldn't narrow it down to 10. I hope it helps you find some great new music. Not in order, here they are:

1) Andreya Triana - Lost Where I Belong


2) Two Door Cinema Club - Two Door Cinema Club


3) Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises


4) Land Of Talk - Cloak and Cipher


5) Savoir Adore - Loveliest Creature


6) Minus The Bear - Omni


7) Massive Attck - Heligoland


8) Luisa Maita - Lero Lero


9) Phantogram - Eyelid Movies


10) The Hundred In The Hands - The Hundred In The Hands


11) Girl Talk - All Day (NSFW)


12) Local Natives - Gorilla Manor


13) Badly Drawn Boy - It's What I am Thinking


14) Crystal Castles - II (with Robert Smith of the Cure)


15) Joy Formidable - A Baloon Called Moan


16) Small Black - New Chain


17) Bonobo - Black Sands


18) Foals - Total Life Forever


19) Thieves Like Us - Again & Again


20) The Go Find - Everybody Knows Its Going To Happen...


And a few usual favorites launched failures this year (IMHO)

Club 8
Bassnectar
Azure Ray
Sufjan Strevens

Enjoy!

2009 New Music List-o-rama

Unlike 2008, this year was a real treat for new music. SOOO good in fact, that I am going to make two lists! Best Albums and Best SIngles.

Best 2009 Albums

Kings of Convenience - Declaration of Dependance
Mirah - (a)spera
Shannon Stephens - The Breadwinner
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeous Phoenix
Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Passion Pit - Manners
Crystal Method - Divided by Night
Washed Out - Life of Leisure EP
East Star Allstars - Easy Stars Lonely Hearts Dub Band
The XX - XX
Other great new bands I discovered this year:

Club 8, Ladyhawke, Lake, Gemma Hayes, New Young Pony Club, Grouper, Loquat, Deltawave

Best 2009 SIngles

Shannon Stephens - The Summer In Heat
Kings of Convenience - 24-25
Fiest + Ben Gibbard - Train Song
Phoenix - 1901
Mirah - The World Is Falling
Grouper - False Horizon
El Perro Del Mar - Change of Heart
Bon Iver - Blood Bank
Lake - You Are Alone
Passion Pit - The Reeling

Honorable Mentions:

Washed Out - Feel It All Around
Grizzly Bear + Fiest - The Service Bell
Silversun Pickups - Substitution
Deltawave - Lost In Music
Crystal Method - Smile
Bassnectar - Cossa Frenzy
Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
The XX - Islands

I am speaking at the UVM Networking Event tonight to about 200 people and figure I better practice what I preach, so I am posting my notes for tonight.

My Question for the Panel discussion:

"How can one be proactive about creating a “personal brand” or a snapshot of oneself on the web? What should every professional consider when using new technologies as a networking advantage, especially the internet?"

Opportunity:

SEO / Brand Management: People are identical to businesses today when it comes to search engine optimization and managing brand reputation. If it is well done, it becomes an asset that will help differentiate you from a vast sea of options available to prospective employers.

Thought Leadership: Allows a professional to establish a reputation as a thought leader in a particular category or discipline. Shows passion, initiative, and experience that supplement a strong resume.

Publish or Perish: Use blogs, threaded discussions, personal websites, twitter, and answering questions on existing community tools like LinkedIn to leave a trail for prospective employers to discover through searches. May also lead to solicitations from competitors, headhunters, and lead to other new opportunities. If done well, you may create followers who subscribe to your blog and twitter feeds and can become a valuable source of advocates who can bring leads in a job hunt.

Purpose Built Tools: Some tools, like LinkedIn are specifically designed to facilitate networking and can offer great ways to connect with broad groups of peers, or make very targeted inquiries about specific companies by leveraging friends and identifying friends of friends with connections.

Liability:

Web Tattoos: The flip side of the web is that it is that your comments are often an indelible and traceable. Any number of examples of employees making disparaging comments about employers that have been discovered and led to termination. Google alerts make it very easy to track mentions of a company online and who is talking about them.

FaceSpace: At some point you are likely to have business contacts / coworkers / bosses start to request friend status on tools like Facebook, so be very prudent about what you want to have made public (and when you are posting updates – employers will see this!)

Recommendations:

Start a blog or contribute to an existing work blog. Buy your name as a URL if you can still get it. Be very careful about what you post, data can live a long time online. Try to get credit on organizational websites for any pro-bono or community involvement to maximize the PR value. Set up a Google alert for your own name so you can monitor and manage your online reputation. Add your LinkedIn and Blog address to your professional email signature to increase contact professional points and promote your brand.

December... Top 10 Time

It wasn't a stellar year in music IMHO. Top 10 for 2008 Releases in rough order:

Sun Kil Moon - April
Aimee Mann - @#%&*! Smilers
The Headlights - Some Racing, Some Stopping
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
The Kooks - Konk
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Santagold - Santagold
Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
Kaskade - Strobelight Seduction

Honorable Mentions:

Nightmares on Wax - Thought So...
Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation
Nine Inch Nails - The Slip


I did discover some great new stuff older stuff in 2008 worth mention (thanks Pandora!):
Maritime - We the Vehicles
Sufjan Stevens - Multiple Albums (I had Illinois & Michigan but bought his whole back catalog... Seven Swans, The Christmas Album, The Avalanche)
The Headlights - Kill them with Kindness
Maggie, Pierce, & EJ - Silver Album
The Album Leaf - Into the Blue Again
Feist - Monarch (From 1999 Only 3000 copies made - That was not easy to get!)
Just Jack - Overtones
Felix Da Housecat - Virgo Blacktro & the Movie Disco

Lets hope for better in 2009!

Best BTV Concerts / Shows (thus far)

Lisa asked me to make a mix of bands we used to see in college and in our carefree (kid free) post college years. It has been fun pulling tracks together to represent the 88 - 95 years in Burlington. We had some seriously fantastic bands back then. As an offshoot, I started thinking about the best shows I have seen over the years here in town. So, in roughly chronological order, here goes my top ten:

1) R.E.M. - Patrick Gym. Halloween 1986.

Freshman year... UVM... band in costume... trippiest video backdrop I have ever seen. Wow. Very altered states and very fun.

2) Suzanne Vega - Flemming Museum / CBW green. Earth Day 1987.

Free show. When she sang the line "And the bells in the cathedral...." from Tom's Dinner, the UVM bell tower actually rang as if on cue. Suzanne was so amazed she couldn't go on.

3) The Cuts - Halverson's Upstreet Cafe. Summer 1990.

Anytime we saw a Cuts show it was fantastic (Border, Hunts, The Front, Metronome), however I guess I have to pick one. Dave Danaught jumps on stage in a loin cloth covered in war paint and leaves in his hair. The rain starts coming down (only trees to provide cover for the band in the back deck those days). We are getting drenched but keep dancing since the band isn't stopping.

4) Sara McLachlan - Club Toast. Fall 1992.

Sara and her band came to Burlington on the the last stop of a crazy 300 day long tour for her first album and put on one of the craziest shows I have ever seen. It started with Sara and a fellow female band mate came out stood in front of the opening band in trench coats and proceeded to flash them. When Sara and her band came on stage, her keyboard player was dressed in a cloth diaper with a conical Madonnaesque bra on.

5) Aimee Mann - Club Metronome. Summer 1993.

Aimee came to play burlington to support her first solo album, "Whatever". Played mostly acoustic solo and the song "Fourth of July" is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

6) Dag & Rusted Root - Club Metronome. Fall 1994.

It was a free show by The Point. Might be the single best show I have ever seen, period. I can't remember who opened for who, but both bands gave it everything they had. Rusted Root had like 10 people crammed on this little stage and I have never seen a group that seemed to enjoy being on stage more.

7) Belizbeha - Club Toast. Fall 1995.

OK. I have never seen a bad Belizbeha show. However I do have a bootleg from this show and they killed it (two nights at Toast and I went to both). When the band had the full horn section (Grippo, Chris, Joey) the sound was even better. Gee Wiz showing up was always good as well. I was a bit of an unintentional groupie for a while and had the good fortune of catching shows in Boston (Paradise, House of Blues, and the Beachcomber), LBI NJ (The Tide), and NYC (The New Music Cafe). I missed them in Vail by a few weeks. I can't hear the opening notes of "Hey You Guys" on Charlie's Dream and not still break into a smile.

8) Moby - Club Toast. ??? 1997.

Went to this show by myself. Couldn't believe nobody would come see him in a room that small. Juno Reactor opened up and it was Epic! 250 people might have fit in Toast? I saw him in Boston a three years later on the Play tour and he sold out Avalon.

9) Jussagroove - Club Metronome. Halloween 1997.

I went as Disco Stu from the Simpsons. The lead singer pulled me on stage at one point and exclaimed "Disco Stu doesn't advertise". An alter ego was created. Danced so hard I had trouble walking the next day. I wish I had pictures scanned to share.

10) Fiest - Flynn Theater. Fall 2007.

Front row center seats. BFP called it the best show of 2007. Can't disagree.


Other good shows that didn't make the final cut:

Pure Pressure-ish band that played at the Warren 4th Parade every year
Maceo Parker at Jazzfest
"til Tuesday at the Pickle Barrel
Steel Pulse at the Reggae Fest Oakledge Park
7 Seconds at the Border
Dead Milkmen at the Border
The Jones & Lambsbread at Hunts
James Brown at Patrick Gym
Billy Bragg at the Flynn Theater
Johnny Clegg at Memorial (Nothing sounds good at Memorial)
Bonnie Raitt & CSN at the Stowe Performing Arts tent
Samples at the Front
Wildest Dreams at Kingsland Bay State Park (Jensen / Paulsen Wedding)
Laurie Anderson at the Flynn

Valdez AK Ski Safari

Wow! Just got back from a 10 day trip to Valdez Alaska for some back country skiing. Check out the photos and video...

Photos at Flickr here.

YouTube Video: